The River Thames Guide
A user friendly guide to what the Thames and its surrounding areas have to offer in the way of boats and boating, entertainment, food and drink, accommodation, corporate entertainment and tourist information.
 

Virtual London
Your London Tourism and travel guide with online hotel reservations, interactive maps, information and booking about tours, attractions, restaurants, shows, shopping and weather.

Pearly Society.co.uk
Welcome to the official website of The London Pearly Kings and Queens Society! 

History of Marylebone

Local London Timeline
43 The Romans invaded Britain and Aulus Plautus built a fort to guard the Thames crossing at a point that became Londinium. Boadicea, queen of the Icini, burnt it in AD 60. From 70 to 125 Londinium was rebuilt as a Roman city.

London Blitz
London in the firing line.

Tyburn Tree
Every Monday for the last 200 years or so of its existence, condemned men and women travelled the route from Newgate to Tyburn, place of public execution. Set at the junction of what is now Edgware Road, Park Lane and Oxford Street, the gallows overlooked Hyde Park. Estimates of the number of people who died here vary between 40,000 and 60,000. They were mostly commoners.

Underground History
Disused Stations on London's Underground.
London Underground Tube Map

Transport For London
London transport, London underground, travel information & travel direction maps, London bus routes, travel news and travel reports form transport for London.

London-Drinking
Welcome to London-drinking, the biggest and best online guide to London's bars and pubs. Whether you want to rub shoulders with the stars or enjoy a quiet pint, you'll find endless choices of drinking right across town.

Covent Garden
Arts, history, community reviews of places & goods in Covent Garden.

020 London
London's Local Search Engine Directory.

Sweeny Todd
The true story of Sweeny Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Direct Bus Routes all over London    (Quickmap)
Bursting Buses' is an animated index of London buses from important centres to locations throughout London.

Explore London
A visual guide to London. Tour 300 widescreen images. Visit historic sights.

101 things to do before you leave London

LondonTown.com
London hotel and event review.

VIEW London
Reviews and Venue information for London restaurant, London Clubs, London Cinemas, London hotel bookings, London Bars and Pubs. London events information, theatre tickets, tourist information and London maps.

Walk It - A step in the right direction
The walking route planner that helps you get around town on foot. Generate a customised map, find out how long your journey will take (according to a slow, medium or fast walking pace) and even how many calories you'll burn along the way.

London Restaurant Guide
An insider's view of London's fairly priced restaurants, with an online booking service.

History of the East End
East London from Roman times, medieval, Victorian to the Krays and Canary Wharf.

The Old East End
Maps, drawings and eye-witness accounts chart the growth of the East End, from the villages and green fields where Samuel Pepys took country walks, to the expansion of the docks and the social deprivations of 19th-century industrialisation.

History of the Metropolitan Police
A comprehensive history of the Metropolitan Police from 1829 to the present. In these pages you will find descriptions of famous and lesser known events throughout the history of The Met as well as biographies of key figures and details of famous cases.

Museum of London
Official web site of the Museum of London, the largest, most comprehensive city museum in the world. The London Museum tells the fascinating story of London from prehistoric times to the present day.

Camden Markets
London's most popular open-air market area with stalls, shops, pubs and restaurants. This website is a guide for visitors, with maps, photos, a list of traders and links with on-line shopping.

Kensington and Chelsea
A great guide for travellers to the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Includes information on accommodation, attractions and more!

My Notting Hill
The history of Portobello and Notting Hill, West London.      Notting Dale

Story of London
Discover the great, the strange, the seedy, the inspired, the criminal and the downright ordinary past of one of the World's Greatest Cities!

Fascinating Facts about London

• The tomb of Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser in Westminster Abby is said to contain unpublished works by his contemporaries, including works  from William Shakespeare, who threw manuscripts into his grave to honour his genius.
   
• One, London, is the postal address of Apsley House, the Duke of Wellington's former residence of Hyde Park Corner.
   
• The "Old Lady of Threadneedle" street is a nickname referring to the Bank of England, located near the Tower of London.
   
• St. Thomas' Hospital used to have seven buildings, one for each day of the week.  Supposedly, this was so staff knew on which day patients has been admitted.  Only two of the buildings remain.
   
• Signs on Albert Bridge order troops to break step while marching over it; this to avoid damaging the structure with the resonating vibrations.
   
• Before the 17 ft. statue of Admiral Lord Nelson was erected on top of the Trafalgar Square column in 1842, 14 stonemasions held a dinner on top of the 170 ft. high pedestal.
   
• The exact centre of London is marked by a plaque in the Church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields overlooking Trafalgar Square.  The actual point is on the corner of Strand and Charing Cross Road, near the statue of Charles I,  there is even a plaque on the wall confirming this.
   
• Brixton Market was the first electrified market in the country and stands, as a result, on Electric Avenue.
   
• Dr. Samuel Johnson once owned 17 properties in London, only one of which still survives; Dr. Johnson's Memorial House in Gough Square, which contains a brick from the Great Wall of China, donated to the museum in 1822.
   
• The annual Notting hill Carnival is the second largest carnival in the world after Rio de Janeiro.
   
• The Monument to the Great Fire of London was intended to be used as a fixed telescope to study the motion of a single star by Robert Hooke, who designed the structure with Sir Christopher Wren.
   
• Only six people died in the Great Fire of London, but seven people died by falling or jumping from the Monument to it before a safety rail was built.
   
• Postman's Park, behind Bart's hospital, is one of London's great hidden contemplative spots.  It is full of memorials to "ordinary people" who committed acts of heroism.
   
• The tiered design of St. Bride's Church off Fleet Street is said to have inspired the traditional shape of wedding cakes.
   
• The nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel" refers to the acts of pawning one's suit after spending all of one's cash in the pubs of Clerkenwell.
   
• Oxford Street is the busiest shopping street in Europe, having over 300 shops and receiving in excess of  over 200 million visitors a year, at a turnover of approximately £5 billion pounds a year.
   
• The Piccadilly Circus statue known as Eros, originally intended as an angle of mercy but renamed after the Greek god of Love, is actually intended to depict the Angel of Christian Charity, and is part of a memorial to the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury.  Its stance, aiming an arrow up Shaftsbury Avenue, is thought to be a coarse visual pun.
   
• The only true home shared by all four Beatles was a flat (apartment) at 57 Green Street near Hyde Park, where they lived in the autumn of 1963.
   
• The gravestone of the famous Elizabethan actor Richard Burbage in the graveyard of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, reads simply "Exit Burbage."  The church's burial register also records the death in 1588 of Thomas Cam, "Aged."
   
• London was the first city to reach a population of more than a million people, in 1811.  It remained the largest city in the world until it was overtaken by Tokyo in 1957.
   
• The Dome, the focus of the Millennium celebrations, is the largest structure of its kind in the world.  It's big enough to house the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Statue of Liberty.
   
• The Monument,  built to commemorate the Great Fire of London which devastated the original walled city in September 1666, is the tallest isolated stone monument in the world.  It is 205 ft (62 m) high, and is said to be 205 ft west of where the fire started in a baker's house, on Pudding Lane.
   
• Elephant and Castle derives its name from a craftsman's guild, whose sign featured an elephant in reference to the ivory handles of the knives they made.
   
• "Pearly Kings and Queens," so named because of the clothes they wear which are studded with countless pearl buttons, were originally the "aristocracy" of the representatives of east London's traders.
   
• Mayfair is named after a fair that used to be held in the area every May, and Piccadilly after a kind of stiff collar made by a tailor who lived in the area in the 17th century.
   
• London's smallest house is only three-and-a-half- feet (3 ½) wide, and forms part of the Tyburn Convent in Hyde Park Place, where 20 nuns live.  These nuns have taken a vow of silence and still pray for the souls of those who lost their lives on the "Tyburn Tree," London's main execution spot until 1783, in which about 50,000 people were executed.  There is a plaque at the junction of Edgware Road & Marble Arch marking the site.
   
• Covent Garden is actually a spelling mistake!  The area used to be the market garden for what is now Westminster Abbey monastery and convent.
   
• Marble Arch is a well-known landmark, seeming lost on its own island nowadays.  It was designed by John Nash in 1827 to be the main entrance to Buckingham Palace, however it was too narrow for the grandest coaches to pass through.  Now, only senior members of the royal family and one of the royal artillery regiments are allowed to pass under it.  Inside the arch is a tiny office which once used to be a police station.
   
• Harrods, London's most famous department store, had its beginnings in 1849 when Henry Charles Harrods opened a small grocery shop nearby on Brompton Road.  By concentrating on good quality and impeccable service, rather than low prices, the store was soon popular enough to expand over the surrounding area.
   
• The Houses of Parliament has 1,000 rooms, 100 staircases, 11 courtyards, eight bars, and six restaurants - none of them  open to the public.  The Palace of Westminster was sited by the river so it could not be totally surrounded by a mob.
   
• The architect of the OXO Tower originally wanted to use electric lighting to advertise the meat extract product, but permission was refused so he redesigned it with "OXO" incorporated as windows on all four sides which shined out the advertising message.  The building now houses restaurants, design shops, and galleries.
   
• There is a 19th century time capsule under the base of Cleopatra's Needle, the 68 ft., 3,450 year old obelisk on the Embankment, containing a set of British currency, a railway guide, a Bible, and 12 portraits of "the prettiest English ladies."
   
• The Tower of London's most celebrated residents are a colony of seven ravens.  It is not known when they first settled here, but there is a legend that should the ever desert the Tower, the kingdom and monarchy will fall.
   
• Only of British Prime Minister out of the 51 who have held the office since 1751, has ever been assassinated; Mr. Spencer Perceval was shot in the House of Commons in 1812.
   
• In 1881, the Savoy Theatre became the first theatre to be lit by electricity.
   
• The oldest surviving bridge on the Thames Path, now the longest riverside walk, is the Clattern Bridge at Kingston, dating back to the 12th century.  Richmond Bridge is the oldest Thames surviving Thames bridge, built in 1774.
   
• Lombard Street is named after Italian bankers who left Lombardy to settle here the 13th century.  It is still a banking centre.
   
• The Inner and Outer dome of St. Paul's Cathedral is the second biggest dome in the world, standing at 360 ft (110 m) high, only after St. Peter's in Rome.
   
• The sculpture on top of Wellington Arch, by Adrian Jones, was added in 1912, and its said that before it was installed, Jones seated eight people for dinner in the body of one of the horses.
   
• England's first printing press was set up on Fleet Street in the 15th century by William Caxton's assistant, and has been a centre of London's publishing industry ever since.
   
• The British Airway's London Eye, a 443 ft (135 m) high observation wheel has thirty two capsules on it, each being able to carry up to 25 people (enough to fill Concorde 160 times over), and takes passengers on a gentle 30 minute round trip .  Observing it in operation from the ground, one might think that it's not moving, but "The Eye" turns continuously and moves so slowly enough that the capsules are boarded while moving.  The wheel is halted though for those requiring assistance.  The Eye weighs 1,700 tonnes of steel in its construction and is heavier that 250 double decker buses.
   
• Hungerford Bridge, built in 1864, is the only bridge that crosses the Thames and was built  to carry both trains and pedestrians to Charing Cross.
   
• With a population of 7.3 million, London is the largest city in Europe.  The average household size is 2.3 people.
   
• London containing 143 registered parks and gardens, which accounts for 30% of all of London's open spaces.
   
• London Bridge, in its various forms, was the only river crossing in London from Roman times until 1750.  The present bridge, completed in 1972, replaced the one of 1831 now in Lake Havasu, Arizona.
   
• Marshall Street is built over a mass graveyard of the victims of the "Great Plague" in 1665.  In London, more than 150,000 people died of the plague between 1603 and 1665.
   
• There are over 300 languages spoken in the Greater London area and almost half of Britain's black and minority ethnic residents live here, with resident communities from over 90 different countries.  More than a third of Londoners belong to an ethic minority community.
   
• London has a younger population than the rest of the UK; 41% of Londoners are aged 20-44, but it also has nearly a million people (roughly 930,000) over 65 and close to have a million (approximately 440,000) over 75 years old.
   
• London is home to currently four World Heritage Sites: Palace of Westminster, Tower of London, Maritime Greenwich, and Kew Gardens.
   
• Big Ben, known to most people to be the four-faced clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, is actually the resonant bell on which the hours are struck.  It was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, Chief Commissioner of Works when the bell was hung in 1858.  Cast in Whitechapel, it was the second giant bell made for the clock, the first having become cracked during a test ringing.